These are fairly depressing days with respect to politics. While there are reasons for not being happy with the policies of Barack Obama, the caricature constructed by Fox News—you know, how he’s a communist, fascist, secular socialist, whatever the term du jour—has no connection to the world we live in. No argument can take place if there’s no common reality. Then throw in the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim memes that are doing quite well out there (sometimes joined, since today I heard someone claim that Hezbollah was connected to car bombings on Mexican border), it makes me not want to have anything to do with politics. But right here I try to take a breath and remember that the point of this ugliness is discouragement.
I’ll just comment on two items that are outlandish: 1) the mosque derangement syndrome that has swept away something like 60% of population, and 2) the antipathy on the part of the tea-partiers to net neutrality. In both cases I see a debate being driven by a false concept.
Mosque derangement syndrome has been fed by would-be leaders, almost entirely Republican. Here is Sarah Palin on her Twitter account:
Newt Gingrich commented similarly, using two further examples:
“Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the holocaust museum in Washington,” Gingrich insisted, speaking of the museum where just a year ago a guard was killed by a white supremacist trying to enter the building with a gun.Gingrich then went on to claim that “we would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor.”
All told we have three examples: the Serbian Orthodox Church building a church at field where Bosnian Muslims were killed, the Nazis putting up sign next to Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, and then the Japanese making some construction next to Pearl Harbor site. The key element in these three examples is that three institutions are named: Serbian Orthodox Church, Nazis, and nation of Japan. But Islam is not a similar institution, neither a church, nor party, nor state. It’s a religion as broad as Christianity. No one would ever say, well, the Seventh Day Adventists did such and such here, so there should be no Christian church built near here. That would be absurd, because Catholics and Evangelicals and Mormons would all rightly say they had nothing to do with act. Most people in America would know it’s absurd to ban Mormons if Seventh Day Adventists do something wrong.
The only way to make sense of arguments about the Cordoba House is to assume that Islam exists in people’s minds as a grand unified instititution, on the order of the Roman Catholic Church. Of course Islam is nothing like that. One strength of Sunni Islam is that it has no priesthood or denominational apparatus. Al-Qaeda doesn’t by any means speak for Muslims, but neither is there any official spokesperson to stand out and “refudiate” people. This apparently leads to confusion, because we expect a religion to act sort of like a church/denomination. If Islam is not an institution, and Muslims in America and elsewhere had nothing to do with 9/11, then it’s wrong to ban them from constructing a place of worship a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. It’s wrong because it’s unconstitutional, but it’s worse than just wrong, it’s a blunder: this is exactly the kind of positive public expression of Islam that we should be encouraging (and proud of).
The second issue is the Tea-Partiers response to the issue of net neutrality. It’s an issue that highlights a central concept: the trust of corporations over government. Here is the way at least some of the Tea Party understands net neutrality:
Radke said the Tea Party opposition to net neutrality stems from concerns over increased government power.
“I think the clearest thing is it’s an affront to free speech and free markets,” she said.
She said more Tea Party groups plan to make time to focus on net neutrality ahead of the midterm elections.
“There are so many assaults on individual liberties — the EPA, net neutrality, cap-and-trade, card-check; the list goes on — that sometimes the Tea Party doesn’t know where to start its battles,” Radtke said.
That last list especially gets me. The Environmental Protection Agency. How the hell does the EPA constitute an assault on my individual liberty? It’s thanks to the EPA that there are regulations on pollution and toxicities.. making it possible for me to walk outside almost anywhere and feel relatively safe (though I’d still never drink any water). Is that sense of personal safety the work of corporations? No, historically we know corporations have had no compunction about polluting. Why should they when the whole point of a corporation is to make a profit? The whole point of our democratic government, on the other hand, is to protect and enable its citizens to live the lives they want. That free life can only be accomplished through laws on individual acts and regulations concerning corporate responsibilities.. otherwise we are at something more like anarchy.
I can’t understand how someone could look at the world now and feel more threat from government than from corporations. Corporations would love to get their hands on the net and make it into a cash cow for their stock-holders. I don’t even blame corporations for that, since profit is their job. Government is our bulwark against corporate vassalage; it’s the process by which we get to decide how we want our world ordered for the benefit of our communities and children. The genius of government, and where it differs from corporations, is that it is designed to be responsive to the needs of the people.
The greatest danger to our democracy is the possibility that the whole thing can be managed. That is, corporations will be able to act against the interests of the people by means of their dominance of media and opinion outlets. By making use of wedge issues and building a false frame for understanding the world (Obama is socialist), corporations might be able to put in place profoundly undemocratic policies. The antagonism to net neutrality on the part of the Tea-Partiers is a perfect example of this. Theirs is obviously a policy that could eventually limit individual freedom of expression.. but in adopting their “libertarian” view of the world they’ve become the tools for corporations. Freedom, in their mouths, is just another word for making big money.
As I make my way to the end of The Crusades by Thomas Asbridge (excellent one volume view of the Crusades), I’m thinking a lot about what changed in Islam on account of these wars. I’d also bundle together with the Crusades the wars against the Mongols, which were a similar do-or-die war for Muslims in the Middle East. The struggles against the Crusaders and Mongols brought out a renewed emphasis on jihad, but most importantly these struggles marked the ascendancy of Sunni Islam. There’s also something different about the personal spirituality of this era.. which I want to explore first.
Salah al-Din was the great political leader of the era, and his biographers are careful to mention his piety. I find Salah al-Din impossible to know, so wrapped up he is with Arabic great man historical accounts. A much better view of spiritual life among the warrior class comes from The Book of Contemplation by Usama ibn Munqidh, who gives us what is more or less a book of anecdotes drawn from his life experiences. Ibn Munqidh gives a lively portrait of his father, beginning with his prowess in battle.
My father (may God have mercy upon him) was very experienced at warfare. His body bore some dreadful wounds, but he died in his bed. One day he took part in a battle in full armor, wearing an Islamic-style helmet with a nasal. Someone—in those days most of their battles were with Arab tribesmen—hurled a javelin at him and the spear-head struck the nasal of the helmet. It dented the nasal and caused his nose to bleed, but it didn’t hurt him. But if God (glory be to Him) had decreed that the javelin should deviate from the nasal of the helmet, it would have killed him. [62]
In even the pious asides (“God have mercy upon him”) we see a worldview fully formed by Islam. The remarkable event of a spear striking a thin nasal guard straight on leads ibn Munqidh to a brief meditation on God’s fate. This description of a father who bore many wounds from battle should not for a moment take away appreciation of him as a Muslim. In the very next section ibn Munqidh describes a hobby of his father:
My father wrote in an elegant hand and that spear-thrust did not affect his calligraphic style. But he never copied anything except the Qur’an… When he was close to death, he said, “In that chest there are some copy-books, and in each one I have written a complete text of the Qur’an. Put the copy books under my cheek in the grave.” We counted the copy-books and there were forty-three of them. [63-4]
So we have a battle hardened warrior, with a battle hardened son, and yet he devoted himself in his spare time to copying out the Qur’an in an elegant style. Although warriors were always around, it seems that this Crusader/Mongol era in the Middle East led to a stricter combination of these sides of life.
The crusades, we should keep in mind, were from the start genuine religious wars. Not that everyone’s motive was pure, but the Latins fielded huge armies as a result not of natural existing political bodies, but on the basis of common religious feeling that spread throughout kingdoms. Writing about the First Crusade’s close call at Antioch, Asbridge describes the scene thus:
The crusaders unquestionably fought amid an atmosphere of fervent spiritual conviction, urged on by priests marching among them, chanting and reciting prayers. Above all, it was their shared sense of devotional mission, fused with an almost primal sense of desperation, which bound the Latins together during this terrible confrontation… [81-2]
We can add to this the importance of martial orders like the Templars and Hospitallers, which were church-sanctioned monastic orders dedicated to fighting and holding the Holy Land. Asbridge is often helpful in pointing out the potent religious emotions that were foundational (or disruptive) to crusader efforts.
Since crusaders relied on holy war as a concept to give unity amid political division, Muslims needed to counter with some kind of large unifying message of their own.. which turned out to be jihad. The basis for jihad was quite different than crusading, with the latter’s promised forgiveness of sins, but the final effect of jihad was similar: a unity out of politically disparate groups. Salah al-Din, learning from his predecessor Nur al-Din, skillfully employed jihad rhetoric to justify the enlargement of his realm. I won’t rehearse the history, but it’s clear that the crusades brought about the possibility for a larger unity than perhaps could have been achieved had there been no crusades.
What I find eternally fascinating about the Fatimids (who ruled Egypt from 969 to 1171 AD) is that they ran something like a philosophical empire. The caliphs were not warlords, but religious leaders. Their claims for rulership were founded on immensely difficult and abstruse philosophical/theological bases. Missionaries advanced their religious-political arguments all over the Islamic world at their behest. It’s true that this white heat of the Fatimid dynasty proved to be short lived (although continuing among groups like the Assassins), but nothing like it will ever be seen again in the Middle East. From 1171 AD when Salah al-Din officially took control of Egypt on up to the Ottoman era, the rulers of Egypt were warlord sultans.
The Fatimid era is usually discussed as the “high water mark” of Shi’i Islam. But there’s no discussion about why Shi’i Islam worked for a couple of centuries and then suddenly stopped working. Here’s one way to look at it. In the context of the disintegration of the Abbasid Empire, the advantage went to small groups that could capitalize on the uniqueness of a brand of Islam. The Fatimids peddled a product that gave them wider organizational possibilities than a host of small states with nothing distinctive about them. The entrance of the crusaders messed up that dynamic. No longer would the key be the creation of a distinctive version of Islam among splintered Muslim groups, now there was an enemy who could justify thinking in general terms about “Islam.” The organization to counter the crusades brought an emphasis on the version of Islam that was easiest and least divisive.. which would be Sunni Islam. This would not be an Islam that gloried in abstract Neoplatonic arguments to establish its legitimacy or readings of the Qur’an, but an Islam that could be adopted by the warlords who were the only ones who could fend off the invaders.
Consider again of the Islam of Usama ibn Munqidh. Note how he makes reference to his father’s “Islamic-style” helmet (I assume that’s in the Arabic, though I can’t check right now). That’s a clue to how in the presence of the Crusaders a symbol system for generalized “Islam” began to exist. Without that broad conception it would be impossible to imagine anyone wearing “Islamic-style” anything. This is just another example of the importance of the Other—even an invasive Other—in helping to define an identity. The father as inveterate copier of Qur’ans is also an example of the type of person with whom we now have to deal. The guy with multiple battle wounds is not the philosophic seeker of a Naser Khusraw. He has been over and over the words of the Qur’an, but allegorical inner meaning was not going to impress this guy. His is undoubtedly a Qur’an adapted to his battle needs.. and a literal reading of the Qur’an will do quite nicely, thanks.
photo by flickr user JohnChristopher, used by Creative Commons License
I seem to constantly run into someone writing about tenure (see here and here). Possibly since I’m going up for tenure next year these articles jump out at me. But it’s worth being clear about why tenure is a good thing.. not just for someone who gets it, but for higher education more generally. I should also say from the start that I don’t believe there’s one-size-fits all argument for tenure. The nature of tenure will vary among institution types.. and my argument here is based on the experience of teaching in a private liberal arts college.
One charge against tenure is that it makes people boring. Junior faculty are scared to say anything controversial lest it hurts tenure chances. Christopher Beam in Slate writes:
Academia relies on young scholars to shake things up. Yet tenure incentivizes them not to. Instead, it rewards students who follow in the footsteps of the elders whose favor they will require when the day of judgment arrives.
While it’s possible that the tenure system at some institutions is dysfunctional and forces junior faculty to follow well-worn paths, the actual incentive I’ve seen is quite different. All junior faculty that I know are actively seeking to be exciting in their work. To “shake things up” is a difficult task in old and well-defined subject matters, but no one I know would hesitate to put something risky out there.. in fact we’re all looking for the risky. Of course shoddy scholarship is something else entirely, but anything that’s exciting and stirs conversation will be a plus in the tenure process.
Where junior faculty really are boring is in their comments to the administration. My university is faculty governed, and that makes for inevitable tension between the goals of the president and board and those of the faculty. All junior faculty will be very careful when it comes to challenging the administration because anyone seen as too strident or hostile could be vulnerable in the tenure process. Only tenure empowers faculty to actively speak out on the direction of the school. I can’t say I’m currently holding anything back (I’m not), but I know that if I get tenure (in sha’ Allah), I will have a different kind of voice. If tenure were taken away, we would simply be workers within an organization that makes its own decisions for its own goals, much as traditional reporters carry out their tasks without much in the way of a voice about editorial policies or marketing strategy. That would be a fine, but it would be different than the widespread ideal of the university.
The value of the tenure system to the institution could be missed by someone outside higher education. At a small university like mine (1400+ students), academic departments and programs are carefully balanced. Something that happens with a professor after a few years at an institution is that he or she becomes a very oddly shaped puzzle piece. Each professor develops a group of repeating courses, contributes to interdisciplinary programs, and finds niches within the university that can be served by his or her particular talents. As oddly shaped puzzle pieces, we are not easily replaceable. If someone leaves, another person will be found for the general position, but various connections and extensions will have to be built up anew with the incoming person. Perhaps the new person, while still being in the English department, will have an interest in environmental studies instead of gender studies.. and will be interested in expanding a particular study abroad program. Nobody duplicates another person. We all grow into our positions, with the effect that we are not 120 fully replaceable parts, but individuals around whom the curriculum has become molded.
So why add tenure into this? Institutions gain a lot from tenure because of the buy-in it encourages from professors. If I felt like in five or ten years the university might get tired of me and my subject matter and try someone else, then the incentive for me would be to put my time into activities that would make me hire-able by other institutions. Why should I dedicate time and effort to helping the university when it has no regard for me? In other words, I will resist become an oddly shaped piece of the puzzle that meets multiple needs within the university. This is an aspect of the tenure system that only in the past year or two I’ve come to understand. I’ve never been an institution person, or felt much in the way of loyalty for schools, but as I come to see this position as a career, I feel more curiosity about how things work and desire more of a voice about our direction. That makes me a different kind of faculty member than I would be if the possibility of tenure was absent.
I readily admit that tenure is an anomaly in the American scene. Lots of workers in lots of industries don’t have anything like the security of tenure. But that’s a shame. People who know they have institutional security are able to devote themselves to furthering an institution in ways otherwise difficult. Where the corporate world congratulates itself on “creative destruction”, I see the idealization of the interchangeable corporate worker. Perhaps we underestimate the kind of creativity that can be unleashed when institutions are seen as owing something to their workers and communities.
For anyone who in this climate might be tempted to resent the career of an academic, I would assure you that there is plenty of insecurity built into the system. Think of all the break points in the process of becoming a faculty member: application to grad schools, grad school exams, dissertation process, job market competitiveness, then reappointment and tenure. For me life from years 26 through 38 will have been lived with a constant mark sitting out ahead of me.. at which I can see significant numbers of peers faltering. I got through one hurdle and then trained my eyes on the next hurdle. Tenure is not the last hurdle in academic life, but it’s the last one where my continuation on this career path is actively in question.
It reminds me a bit of the line by Carl Sandburg: “To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard..” Well, in the world of the academy, to dissertate hard, campaign hard for job, struggle hard to create a niche at institution, and then to be fired at 50 for no reason other than that someone younger might be more exciting would be too damn hard. I wouldn’t deny that the tenure system will have its challenges in the next decade or two, as the academy faces the same destabilization as journalism, but there should be no doubt that tenure is a valuable tool for helping the university becoming more like what we dream it should be.
The children’s book pm the right tells a story that many people won’t recognize. The reference is to a donkey that gets mentioned in the Qur’an, and whose owner is traditionally identified as Uzayr, known otherwise in biblical tradition as Ezra. This story in the second and longest sura of the Qur’an (al-Baqarah) is told in the space of one verse. It is an example of what I, as a teacher, find so challenging about reading the Qur’an. It is a book that repeats its great themes about the majesty of God, but then it is filled with odd corners which require a little more time. If I were ever to do a Qur’an commentary I would stay away from the controversial “important” passages and luxuriate instead in the passages like this one.
Here is the Arabic verse and my translation:
Or think about the the one who passed a village empty of houses and said “How is God going to make this place alive after it has died?” So God caused him to die for a hundred years and then awakened him. God said: “For how many years were you like that?” The man said: “I was like that a day or two.” God said: “No, you were like that for a hundred years! Look now to your food and drink, which haven’t gone bad. Look now to your donkey. We will make you a sign for the people! Look to the bones, how we revive them and then clothe them with flesh. When this had become clear to him, he said “I know now that God has power over all things! [2.259]
There are some obvious questions to begin with: who is this guy and where is he. The story comes and goes but it’s not at all clear who we’re talking about. Most confusing is the question of whose bones were revived and clothed with flesh. Was it the donkey or the man? Some commentaries, such as this one take the answer as obvious, filling in the sense of the verse:
On the other hand, the food and drink which he left behind is intact, and as fresh as it was when he left it. But the donkey is not only dead, but nothing but bones is left of it. And before the man’s eyes, the bones are reunited, clothed with flesh and blood, and restored to life.
In this case it is the donkey that has perished over the course of the man’s 100 years of death. The children’s book about the donkey undoubtedly illustrates this interpretation.
I’m not at all convinced that the donkey is actually in mind here. I have four reasons:
- The food and drink are mentioned, and then pointed out as not having gone bad. The the donkey is brought up, and though we receive no answer as to its state, the natural assumption would be that, like the food and drink, it is standing there just as it was left.
- The next phrase is: “I will make you a sign for the people.” This does not say: “I will make for you a sign.” It is instead a promise to make the man a sign. It is hard to see how reviving the donkey would accomplish this.
- Although the Qur’an makes clear that it is free to use low things as metaphors for God and his work, the revivification of the donkey is an inherently less dignified example.
- The story should have some association with Ezekiel 37 and the valley of dry bones. The donkey would truly take us far away from that biblical model.
The difficulty of the other option is easy to see: how can it be the man who God addresses and then revivifies? This would make him a witness to his own bones coming together. So we have two options, but both involve us in awkwardness.
Now I want to give a brief tour of what the commentator Tabari (838-923 AD) had to say about this verse. It will become clear the extent to which the Qur’an is filled in by outside sources.
The first point to be answered is who is this man? There are two answers given by the commentary: he is ‘Uzayr (Ezra) or Urmiya (Jeremiah). When we look to learn where this is all taking place, we find out that it is Bayt al-Maqdis, or Jerusalem. Tabari proceeds by citing all the different opinions he can find, and here is one example: “Urmiya, when Jerusalem had been destroyed and the books burned, stood in the area of the mountain and said: ‘How is God going to make this place alive after it has died?’” And with that quotation we are launched into the verse itself. Similar short narratives are provided for Uzayr, and he too is located at Jerusalem.
Turning now to the question of whose bones were revived, we should probably not be surprised to learn that opinions were split in the first centuries of Islam. These were careful readers, and the difficulties I sketched out above were in their minds too. Commentators paraphrased the sense of the verse to show how it ought, in their opinion, be interpreted. Here are two examples:
- “Look to your food and drink which haven’t gone bad. Look to your donkey who perished and whose bones are decaying. Look now to its bones and how I revivify them and then clothe them with flesh. So God called forth breath and brought it to the bones of the donkey…”
- “God put life in the man’s head and vision, while his body remained dead. The man saw his donkey standing there in the condition it was in on the day it was tied up. The man likewise saw his food and drink in the condition they were in when he chose this spot. Then God said to him: “Look at your bones, how we revivify them…”
Those are the two choices.. as I’ve mentioned, neither is wholly satisfactory. In one version the donkey is brought back to life and its decaying bones clothed with flesh. In the other the man’s head alone is brought to life, and then he gets to see his own body brought to life. I’m not one who thinks there has to be an answer to these queries. My fascination is with the ingenuity with which these hints of stories are filled out by commentators.. and then how children’s books on the story even get written!
image of Surat al-Baqara from Qur'an of Sultan Baybars
I finished up Surat al-Baqara, or “the Cow”, recently. Getting through it in Arabic was a goal for the summer. This second sura is the longest in the Qur’an, spanning 286 verses. It’s possible to imagine the shorter suras as coming to Muhammad in a burst of inspiration, and even the medium length suras can be listened to in one sitting—like rough, inspired sermons—, but the Surat al-Baqara is long and covers lots of topics. What I like about a long sura like this is the challenge of thinking about how the parts fit together. If we want to look anywhere in the Qur’an for a section that was “composed”, this would be it. By that I mean I there are signs that the pieces of revelation have been fitted together, and as an interpreter one can ask: why was this choice made?
There’s a wealth of famous passages in this sura, but as I worked through the last pages I was struck by what seemed to be a series of biblical allusions. Lots of the biblical characters (Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus) are present throughout the Qur’an, and their stories retold. It’s rarer to find hints of teachings. Here’s what I mean:
Or take the similitude of one who passed by a town, all in ruins to its roofs. He said: “Oh! how shall God bring it to life, after this its death?” but God caused him to die for a hundred years, then raised him up again. He said: “How long didst thou tarry thus?” He said: “Perhaps a day or part of a day.” He said: “Nay, thou hast tarried thus a hundred years; but look at thy food and thy drink; they show no signs of age; and look at thy donkey: And that We may make of thee a sign unto the people, Look further at the bones, how We bring them together and clothe them with flesh.” When this was shown clearly to him, he said: “I know that God hath power over all things.” (2.259)
There are two levels here: first a man passed a ruined town and expresses disbelief that God could ever raise the town back to life; then God causes the man to die for 100 years and raises him up. It seems to the man that he has been gone for maybe part of a day.. not 100 years. God points out his food, that was still good. And then also points to the donkey. Finally God says: “We surely will make you a sign for the people..” Now commences the wonder of bringing the bones together and clothing them with flesh.
I find this a curious passage. Whose bones exactly are being gathered? There are three options: the donkey, the man, or the presumed people of the ruined town. I’m tempted to simply say there’s ambiguity in these lines, and leave it at that, since each of the options brings with it some problems. But the larger point of the passage is not in doubt: God has power over death and life, and the dramatic bringing together of the bones and clothing them with flesh is the sign of that. Behind this event must lie Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones (Ezekiel 37). The bringing together of the bones in a context that makes it into a “sign” points to that biblical vision. The ruined town would be an echo of the ruin brought on the nation of Israel in the Bible.
Just a few verses later is another example of a teaching that appears to come from the Bible:
The likeness of those who spend their substance in the way of God is that of a grain of corn: it grows seven ears, and each ear has a hundred grains. God gives manifold increase to whom He will: And God cares for all and He knows all things. (2.261)
Then that is immediately followed by this verse:
You who believe! cancel not your charity by reminders of your generosity or by injury, like those who spend their substance to be seen of men, but believe neither in God nor in the Last Day. Their likeness is a hard, barren rock, on which is a little soil: on it falls heavy rain, which leaves it a bare stone. (2.264)
and then down the page we find this:
If you disclose almsgiving, even so it is well, but if you keep them hidden, and make them reach those in need, that is best for you: It will remove from you some of your stains of evil. God is well acquainted with what you do. (2.271)
Each of those three verses sounds can be paralleled by verses from the New Testament. The first two quotations above are quite similar to parables given by Jesus, and even introduced with a verbal formula fitting for a parable: “the likeness of.. is.” The third quotation sounds much like Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount talking about not giving publicly, but in secret, so that the reward will be in heaven. These are fleeting references, and the parables are not even fully fleshed out. The life of Jesus is nowhere to be found here, only the teachings.
The final example is in the prayer that ends the sura.
On no soul does God place a burden greater than it can bear. It gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns. (Pray:) “Our Lord! Condemn us not if we forget or fall into error; our Lord! Lay not on us a burden Like that which you did lay on those before us; Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear.
That reminds me of Paul in 1 Corinthians 10.13: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” Paul, like the writing prophets from the Hebrew Bible, does not figure strongly in the Qur’an. But here is a small exception.. with an echo of a Pauline passage.
I’m not sure what to make of this, nor can I explain quite why this all happens right in a line. It’s clear that revealed material, such as the lengthy verses 282, has been added into the sura. I almost wonder if this bunched up teaching material at the end of Sura 2 represents an effort to expand the biblical purview of the Qur’an.. and try out a different kind of material.
The Only Son (1936) by Yasujiro Ozu could easily have been transformed into a feelgood movie. In fact, one shivers to think of what would become of it if ever remade for an American audience. The film—Ozu’s first talkie—is about the fate of an only son, whose mother sacrifices greatly to see that he is able to attend school. The hope in this sacrifice is that her son will one day be a great man. This is all sketched for us in the first minutes of the film, when we see the young son and then his supportive schoolmaster in conversation with the mother. The mother assents to paying for school, which will make her own life harder for the foreseeable future. Then uncharacteristically for Ozu we are pushed forward a dozen years or so. The mother is still working in a factory, but she is ready for the payoff of her sacrifice. She’s just about to leave her small town and journey to Tokyo to see her son. Along with the mother, at first the audience doesn’t get it. The son seems about average and prosperous as he is introduced, but as they get closer to his home, we realize that he hasn’t done well for himself, and is in fact barely making it in Tokyo by teaching math at an evening school. He also has a wife and a young child to support. He must borrow money just to be able to show his mother around Tokyo and get her something special to eat.
The theme here is disappointment in life. There’s no one to really blame, since the son is nice and decent as can be, but things haven’t turned out as hoped. The mother sacrificed so much, yet that sacrifice seems empty in the face of this failure. Ozu’s film hovers over this situation and watches the shame and frustration of the characters, as well as taking careful note of how tight the money is. Ozu feels no need to slam political parties or make contemporary arguments (as we might see in a film by Mizoguchi). His interest is solely in the muted personal agonies that the drama unveils.
Now, back to that almost feelgood ending. After getting a little sum of money through his wife’s selling of her silk kimono, the son begins to take his mother on an outing. Right as that is about to happen, a neighbor boy gets into an accident and has to be taken to the hospital. The son makes the hard decision to give the money he was about to use with his mother to the woman whose son is now in the hospital. In doing this he makes the point that “we have to help each other in times of need.”
Having done the spadework of showing us the economic difficulty of life for these people, this line, though understated, carries quite an emotional load. I would trade The Grapes of Wrath for this scene, which brings us to the same place as Tom Joad’s speech, but with a much more intimate focus.
Giving away the money like this is an undoubted righteous act, and the difficulty is in how the film will make sense of it. The mother is moved to have seen this act by her son, and tells him he’s done something truly wonderful.. and adds that this is the best souvenir he could possibly have given him to take home.
So we might wonder if the sacrifice has made everything worth it. Maybe the point is that the mother wanted her only son to be a great man, and he has become that, only in a different sense than she had imagined. So now she can be happy. An American sensibility would take over and heighten that positive realization. This represents an easy path to resolution, and Ozu instead of playing this up works to deflate this resolution. This is exactly where Ozu’s film becomes a great film, as it is unflinching in its portrayal of the flat-out plain old disappointment that life can generate. Sure, we can be inspiring and nice along the way.. good things in Ozu’s world.. but this doesn’t really overcome disappointment.
Near the conclusion of the film, the son asks his wife rhetorically whether they would be happy in coming years visiting their son and seeing him in the same position as himself. No, of course they wouldn’t be happy with that status; they dream of greater things for him. There’s no sham here that as long as their son is a good person, it would all be worthwhile. In the very last scenes of the film we get a complex look at the mother as she returns to her work in her small town. Her co-worker asks about her trip to Tokyo and about her son.
Then with a calm and radiant smile the mother tells her public version of what she saw:
Her smile seems too expansive. We immediately wonder: is this her true opinion? Has she decided that her son’s moral quality is all she cares about? Or is that smile simply for her co-worker.. and a dodge for her true disappointment. Ozu seems to have been intent on making sure we see through this smile as he next shows us the aged mom walking outside the factory, her body obviously worn out, and her face telling us all we need to know about the depth of her disappointment.
It’s a very personal tragedy.. not the kind of thing that makes the news anywhere in the world. But Ozu has an unflinching and careful way with the personal hopes and fears that most define our connection to life.
The new Criterion release of the The Only Son includes a discussion with film critic David Bordwell. It begins with a stirring encomium on Ozu by Bordwell:
I believe that Ozu is the greatest director ever to work in the history of cinema. And if I had to choose his competitor it would be Mizoguchi. And if I lived on a desert island I would just take all their films with me and that would be fine. That’s cinema as far as I am concerned.
Hear, hear. I would just add that the tendency in making serious comments about directors is to careful make note of their technical skills.. and use that as a springboard to talk about their mastery. But that misses the point that what makes Ozu great.. possibly the greatest filmmaker of all time.. is not technique but insight into human life. He clothes that insight with fitting technical mastery, but his films would not be what they are were he not gifted with a sensibility about life and its inevitable disappointments. Technical mastery is a lot easier to discuss than sensibility.. but one hallmark of the approach to film on this site is the work on explicating the latter issue: what does this film say about the experience of life.
